sketchbook | Olesja Allen

Rainy days are the best.. I mean what there is not to love about the rain? It has been brutally hot for the past couple of months here… But today it is 62 degrees! Sixty-two! I even put a sweater on.. ahh big cozy sweater… I have forgotten how it feels to be cold.. and then being warm! The best feeling ever. Hah, my cat is being funny as always.. Today he has me to look out of a window with.. It’s funny how he moves his head up and down as the rain drops… I wonder what he thinks.. I’m sure it is something like “oh I wonder how I can bite Olesja’s leg again without her getting a hold of me” or “oh look, a bird, yummy yummy bird.. now how can I move this screen to catch it…” I’m telling you the struggles of a house cat…

So with all this rain I’m going to tell you my favorite things to do on a rainy day…

As I was getting my hair done the other day, I was flipping through the pages of Vogue May 2014 issue. At the very end of it my attention was caught by an article about the Italian fashion designer, Giambattista Valli. Well the article wasn’t really about him but about his innovative Parisian apartment. It was not one of those “tour my apartment” articles that many of the designers, and other celebrities have. This article was different. It was very inspiring. It was like looking into the artist’s mind or something like that. His apartment is very traditional yet very modern… He does it by having the “shell” which is an old Parisian apartment (high ceilings with Victorian molding all around) and adding modern fun and colorful pieces to it. To me his apartment is like an artist’s sketchbook. It has messy sketches, ideas, daily thoughts, maybe a photograph of something recorded in it. It’s never the same, each page does not match to the page previous to it. This kind of sketchbook catches your attention. Not everything in that kind of sketchbook will be understood but it doesn’t have to be…

Olesja Allen

Rainy Day, Sunny Mood…

Giambattista Valli’s Apartment in Paris